Minn. House Democrats Urge No More Tobacco Bonds

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The expectation of another Minnesota budget deficit has legislators girding for another difficult debate.

And House Democrats threw down one marker Monday: No more borrowing against the state’s multibillion dollar tobacco settlement.

A state authority recently sold more than $750 million in bonds using the tobacco settlement as the repayment stream. It’s for a budget patch seen as temporary. But the 20-year loan will require end up costing $1.2 billion.

Rep. Lyndon Carlson, the lead Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, says his caucus will oppose such a plan if it’s put forward next year because it creates more budget problems down the road.

One Comment

Nice job dems. I think everyone knows that you condone the use of borrowing against the tobacco settlement to expand the reach of government. Isn’t that clear from the 2011 state shutdown resolution? While you say one thing and do another, people with a little bit of education see and understand the hypocrisy. It’s both sides of the table as well, rinos and dems. First one to come out against it wins the media campaign though. Enough with the smoke and mirrors. Just to be clear, while you do condone this activity, you don’t not condone it as well.

Let’s be responsible journalists as well. Might want to present the whole story and describe fiscal conservatives as a group of people interested in not spending, not borrowing to spend, not growing government. The arguments here would be that instead of borrowing against the tobacco settlement, they wanted a smaller budget by cutting non-essential services and spending. Then you can describe liberals as a group of people interested in spending for the programs they personally like, cherish, depend on, etc, taxing others for the programs they need supported, and growing government to make everyone inclusive and dependent on its services and regulations without consideration for need or priorities. Lastly, they appear to look like the good guys for complaining about all the government spending and that borrowing is a bad thing, only to leverage the disgust of government to pursued useful idiots that higher taxes are the only way to recover from the disease.

For a big one time savings of probably hundreds of millions of dollars, have state employees work off banked sick days and vacation days as vacation in the next 18 months. Putting these people on vacation will not cost much as the efficient work government is doing these days is considerably less than normal. Since the government must set asside money to cover for these banked vacation and sick days, this will free up many millions of dollars.